KIRKUS REVIEW

The meatiness of the
material justifies the length of the author’s second (and concluding) volume of
his biography of Frank Sinatra (1915-1998).

Just as his subject
matured into a far more compelling artist than the one who had elicited squeals
from bobby-soxers, the follow-up to Kaplan’s Frank: The Voice (2010)
is far more substantial than that initial volume. Where the biographer
subjected the early Sinatra to plenty of psychobabble—lots of mommy issues—and
purple prose (particularly steamy with Ava Gardner), the story that begins with
his mid-1950s resurgence sustains its own narrative momentum with the author
generally staying out of the way. The allure of Gardner remains, long after
their short-lived marriage, but Sinatra has grown in accomplishment (and reader
interest) as a recording artist, an actor, a Nevada tycoon, a record-label
mogul, and a controversial public figure. His pals at the time included future
president John F. Kennedy and Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana—as well as the
notorious Judith Campbell Exner, who was involved with all three—and Kaplan
nimbly imagines the negotiations of power and influence, as Kennedy ultimately
froze Sinatra out and Giancana threatened his life. The author explores the
ambivalence of Sinatra’s relationships with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. and
his propensity toward both public boorishness and private benevolence, and he
illuminates his “astonishingly intimate singing, created in the one place where
Frank Sinatra was capable of creating intimacy.” Kaplan still displays pulpy
flashes, in his evocation of how Sinatra and Mia Farrow “began to explore the
strange new territory of each other” and “were a strange hybrid, this
May-September pair, holding hands over a chasm, trying to stay together in
spite of everything.” Refusing to take sides between Sinatra’s widow and his
progeny, Kaplan treats the final years of Sinatra’s life in comparatively
perfunctory fashion. But most of the rest provides a riveting story, strong
enough to stand on its own without a lot of authorial embellishment.

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